Miligo just posted a long and thoughtful comment to my post on Powerpoint. I like how old discussions can reappear on the front page again when someone happens to comment on an old post. I like my prominent display of new comments.

So, to respond to Miligo, I went and found two examples of computer-designed, projected slides used in presentations: Stuart Moulthrop’s DAC 01 keynote and Mark Bernstein’s talk from Hypertext 01. They have daring and well-formulated ideas and visions, and they speak engagingly with warmth and gusto. Stuart and Mark are both amazing public speakers. They tend to have stunning slides, with evocative phrases and visual excitement. I love being swept up in the glow the flow of their presentations.

Neither Stuart nor Mark has made their slides in Powerpoint. I think they use Flash and Quicktime. But they’re slides, done on computers, projected on a screen. Perhaps the default templates of Powerpoint are bad news, but you don’t have to use them.

Mark and Stuart’s slides are available on the web but are hard to grasp, I suspect, without at least a memory of the words and the actions they were intended to be performed with. In that sense they are, indeed, ephemeral. But I don’t think they should be deleted.